


Dirty Laundry

by emn1936



Series: The Aftermath Series [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, News Media, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1568177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emn1936/pseuds/emn1936
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>NOW COMPLETE!<br/>She murmured to her guest for a few moments in a patter meant to put him at ease before the on-air interview began. The entire Federation was salivating to get a good look at the young captain and hear his story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Now complete after - whew! - three years. I've never fully let it go in my head and as a reader who has been burned by unfinished stories I was determined not to let this one remain incomplete.
> 
> This story is loosely a follow-up to one I wrote a few years ago entitled “Home”, the premise of which was the arrival of the Enterprise crew back on Earth after the events of the first movie. And while not necessarily a story begging for a sequel, there was one thread within it which has always niggled at the back of my mind – that is Kirk being pushed by Starfleet Media into the spotlight in the wake of the destruction of the Narada; forced to do interviews and press. This story is the imaging of his first big interview.
> 
> As a result of main focus of the story being that first interview, it is dialogue heavy.  
> The title was inspired by the Don Henley song. “I make my living off the evening news; Just give me something, something I can use; People love it when you lose, they love dirty laundry.”

Arianna – known on over a dozen different worlds by only her first name – was obsessed with controlling every aspect of her program.  As such, her staff was unfazed to see her stroll into the hair and makeup department, ostensibly to greet her guest, but also to verify that every little detail of his appearance met with her approval.

“Jim!” She pasted a welcoming smile on her face and strode forward with outstretched hands toward the young man seated before a large, lighted mirror.

“Is it okay if I call you Jim?” She caught Jim Kirk’s hand between both of hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. “We’re just thrilled and honored that you chose our program for your first interview,” she cooed with practiced sincerity.

Arianna had begun her career as a hard-hitting journalist who had broken important stories throughout the Federation. Her no-nonsense ability to get to the heart of a story had made her a household name on any number of planets. Now, a celebrity in her own right, she had been given her own bi-weekly program and in recent years had turned her attention to being the first to interview world leaders, celebrities, and other personalities making big news.

They didn’t get any bigger than this, she thought, as she murmured to her guest for a few moments in a patter meant to put him at ease before the on-air interview began. The entire Federation was salivating to get a good look at the young captain and hear his story.

She patted a reassuring hand on his shoulder and took her leave.  With a meaningful tilt of her head, she beckoned the stylist from the room.

“I’ll be right back,” the makeup artist assured Kirk, and with a flip of his purple streaked hair, followed his boss into the hallway where she was already speaking with a young Starfleet officer.

“I know Starfleet is looking at Kirk’s appearance on my show with hopes that he will inspire a recruiting drive among the youth populations of the Federation so I assumed you would send him over in dress reds.  After all, who can resist a good-looking young man in uniform? But I have to admit, your choice is brilliant.”

All three glanced through the open door at the man seated inside. Kirk, unaware of their scrutiny, was engrossed in reading something on the tablet in his hands. Arianna and the makeup artist nodded approvingly at his appearance in the casual uniform of the corps of cadets. Charcoal trousers were paired with a black pullover shirt. The knit fabric clung lightly to the leanly defined muscles of his torso and the short sleeves revealed strong arms and hands.  The academy insignia embroidered in dull gold thread on the breast pocket and etched onto the brass buckle of his belt gave the uniform a military flair while the three-button placket was left open at the throat offsetting the rigidity with a sense of casual comfort.

“He’s gorgeous,” the makeup artist noted. “People are going to love this guy.”

Lieutenant Tamra Dexter of Starfleet Media Affairs nodded in agreement.  She had lobbied hard with her commanding officer to abandon the dress red uniform in favor of this more relaxed look and wished Commander Parsons had been nearby to hear Arianna stand in agreement with her choice.

“Just take the shine off,” Arianna counseled the stylist.  “Don’t cover those bruises. They tell a story of their own.”

A faint frown briefly marred the smooth skin of Lt. Dexter’s forehead. She wasn’t sure that she wholly agreed with the other woman. She squinted at the subject of their scrutiny and after a moment’s contemplation, could see the point being made. The dark circles under his eyes and the lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth, as well as the faint traces of bruises on his cheekbone, jaw and encircling his throat lent a gravitas to his appearance that would be reassuring to older viewers while his youthful features would appeal to the potential recruits that Starfleet was desperate to reach.

With a nod of agreement, the stylist left them to return to his charge. Arianna murmured politely to the young officer and prepared to return to her dressing room to complete her own preparations.

“Arianna… do you have a moment?”

The talk show host stifled an impatient sigh.

“Anything for Starfleet,” she gushed through a forced smile. 

“I turned up some additional information on Mr. Kirk that I think you’ll find interesting.”

“Thank you, but I think my researchers and I have what I need.” Arianna prayed for the patience to deal with overeager, overstepping, young media consultants. She raised a hand to dismiss the other woman and turned again to leave.

“I’m sure you’ve been very thorough,” the young lieutenant demurred. “We wouldn’t have thought to send him to anyone but you for his first interview, but, of course, every news program in the Federation wants to get their hands on him…”

Arianna spun around and pinned the other woman with a narrow-eyed stare. She didn’t like being threatened.

“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Send it to my assistant’s hand-held.”

“I’m sorry,” Dexter apologized with patent insincerity. “It’s your eyes only, or not at all.”

The older woman covered the distance between them with two long, angry strides and held out an imperious hand for the lieutenant’s PADD.

“Fine,” she growled. “Let me see.”

Dexter watched with ill-concealed satisfaction as the superior expression melted away from the talk show host’s face to be replaced by gape-mouthed disbelief.

The older woman dragged her gaze away from the data displayed on the device in her hand.

“Are you sure of this?” Barely suppressed excitement tightened her voice.

“Starfleet keeps impeccable records.” Dexter fought to keep her expression remote, but could not wholly erase the trace of smugness now creeping into her own tone.

“And you didn’t give this information to anyone else?”

Arianna reached out and wrapped her hand around the other woman’s arm in an urgent grip.

“We’re live in less than ten minutes. There’s no way for me to verify this.” Her fingers tightened warningly. “I cannot go on air with something like this unless you’re absolutely positive it’s true.”

“I am one hundred percent sure,” Dexter promised.  Glancing around, she lowered her voice. “Look, between you and me, I’m on a short list for promotion. I’m not going to pretend that a good word from you wouldn’t go a long way to moving my name to the very top of that list.” She widened her eyes meaningfully. “I wouldn’t steer you wrong.”

Arianna closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Opening them, she ran her gaze over the data again.

“Send it to my personal hand-held.”  She gave the lieutenant the code generally held for well-placed sources and trusted colleagues.

“I’m going to finish getting ready.” Arianna laid a companionable hand on Dexter’s shoulder and graced her with a brilliant smile. “We’re going to make history tonight.”


	2. Two

Chapter Two

                                     

“Truly, my guest this evening requires no introduction. I hope you will join me in welcoming the young man who took command of the USS _Enterprise_ and in so doing, saved this planet – and who knows how many others – from certain destruction.”

Arianna shifted her gaze from the camera and directed a warm smile at the man seated on the other side of a small round table.

“Welcome, Captain Kirk. It’s an honor to have you on our show.”

Uncomfortable under the bright lights and the unblinking stare of the cameras directed at him, Jim Kirk fought the urge to fidget. He figured he had made it this far on bravado and luck. Hoping the well hadn’t run dry, he pasted a smile on his face.

“It’s my pleasure, ma’am,” he demurred. “But it’s ‘cadet’, not ‘captain’.  The captaincy was a temporary field command.”

Arianna’s eyes widened and she let out a little chuckle.

“I guess that’s right. So much has happened in such a short period of time, it’s easy to forget that despite everything, you’ve yet to actually graduate from the Academy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Arianna wrinkled her nose and released a tiny sigh.

“You call me ‘ma’am’ and I have to admit that it makes me feel old.” She sent a winking glance toward the camera. “But I’ve interviewed enough Starfleet personnel over the years to know that asking you to call me ‘Arianna’ is going to fall on deaf ears. So I’m going to do my best to not wince every time you say ‘ma’am’.”

“Yes ma’am.” He shot her a quick grin and drew an obliging laugh from her.

“So, tell us.  You’ve been home a few days now. What have you been doing? Have you seen your family?”

“I spent the first evening with my mother and stepfather.”

“And for the last two days?”

“Meetings.” His shoulders rose and fell on a long exhale of breath. “Many, many meetings.”

Arianna quirked a brow.

“Care to expand on that?”

Kirk rocked his head back and forth in careful consideration of his next words.

“I guess you could say the Admirals were…” He paused, allowing a well-timed beat, “… _curious_ about what happened out there.”

She grinned, enjoying his quick wit.

“I know you’re command track, but with an answer like that, you might want to think about joining the Diplomatic Corps.”

“Ahh…

Kirk suppressed a laugh as he pictured Bones’ reaction to Arianna’s suggestion. He imagined the doctor’s eyes rolling wildly about at the very idea of Jim as a Federation ambassador and wondered if it were possible to sprain one’s eye sockets.

“Well,” Arianna interrupted his silent musing. “Certainly, _I_ am as curious as any admiral.  We’ve briefly mentioned the Academy. Why don’t we start there?”

She consulted the notes on her tablet.

“The average Academy recruit is around eighteen or nineteen years of age. You were twenty-two when you entered the Academy. Why the late start?”

“The truth is that I had actively avoided the idea of the Academy for years.”

“Why?”

Kirk rubbed a hand over his chin. 

“I don’t know if there’s an easy answer to that question,” he sighed. “I guess the short answer is that I was an angry, disillusioned kid hell-bent on doing exactly the opposite of what other people thought I should do with my life.”

“But something changed your mind.”

“Some _one_.” Kirk clarified. “The officer who recruited me… he spoke with such sincere passion about the importance of Starfleet and the Federation.”

Kirk glanced down for a moment before lifting his gaze back to hers.

“I don’t know how to explain,” he said softly. “He challenged me. I was twenty-two years old and my life was going nowhere because that’s what I thought I wanted. Then he showed up and dared me to reach for something out of the ordinary.”

“The officer you’re speaking of is Captain Christopher Pike, is he not?”

“He is.”

“The same Captain Pike who is currently the commanding officer of the _Enterprise_?”

“Yes.” He swallowed hard, thinking of his mentor lying in a hospital bed at Starfleet Medical. There had been no time to visit the captain since returning home and he made a silent vow to do just that as soon as this interview had concluded.

Arianna glanced down at her notes again.

“Captain Pike elevated you to Acting First Officer of the _Enterprise_ before he left the ship to negotiate with the Romulan Nero.”

“Yes.”

She arched a brow.

“I’d say the captain has a great deal of confidence in you.”

“I hope so.”

“Let’s back up just a bit,” Arianna suggested. “You entered the Academy three years ago, but you’re due to graduate at the end of this term.”  She frowned.  “That means that you somehow managed to compress a four year course of study into three years.”

Kirk nodded.

“That’s right.”

“I believe that’s unprecedented.  It could not have been an easy task.” 

She gazed at him curiously.

“I guess my question is ‘why?’”

A self-deprecating look crossed his features.  “My closest friend calls me “Idiot” more often than he calls me by my name.”

Arianna chuckled and waited for him to continue.

‘Of course, I like to think he means that affectionately.”

Kirk let the answering grin linger on his face for a moment before adopting a more serious expression.

“The truth is I wanted to prove to everyone that Captain Pike had not been mistaken in recruiting me. And I like a challenge. So I set an almost impossible – and maybe _idiotic_ goal for myself – to finish a four year course load in three years.”

She tapped her stylus against the edge of the tablet resting on her lap.

“Would you say that being a legacy student helped you achieve your goal?”

The open expression on Kirk’s face disappeared.

“I didn’t enter the Academy as a legacy.”

Arianna pursed her lips and locked gazes with Kirk.

“I can see that you’re a little uncomfortable right now, but I want to pursue this line of questioning for another moment,” she said with practiced sympathy.  “Captain Pike made his recruitment pitch one evening and you boarded the shuttle to San Francisco the next morning, correct?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “That’s correct.”

She tapped a finger on the glossy armrest of her chair.

“Most people don’t just wake up one morning and decide to become a Starfleet cadet,” she mused. “The admissions process is arduous. Recruits must have a record of high academic achievement in their lives. They must pass a rigorous admissions exam and even then, having the recommendation of a well-placed member of the Federation or Starfleet is almost always required.”

“All of which I had,” Kirk pointed out. “I freely admit that I had been drifting through life without any real sense of purpose, but my academic transcripts exceeded the standards set by the Academy and I took and passed the admissions exam less than 24 hours after stepping off the shuttle in San Francisco with no time in advance to prepare. As for the last of it, Captain Pike is well-admired by his peers.  He not only recruited me, but he stood as my recommendation.”

“So you don’t believe that your lineage had anything to do with your rapid acceptance into the Academy?”

He dipped his head in acknowledgment of her point.

“I’m sure it did. You can’t have my name and not…” He broke off and shrugged. “Look, I know that Captain Pike took notice of me that night because of my name. I’m not pretending otherwise. But my accomplishments while at the Academy are my own.”

“You’ve been famous since the moment of your birth,” she pointed out. “The so-called ‘Kelvin Baby’.”

She glanced beyond him, nodding toward her producer and a second later gestured as an image of a much younger Winona Kirk and her infant son loomed over them.  

“Are you telling me that you do not believe that being the son of one of Starfleet’s most revered heroes in recent history has had any impact on your time at the Academy?” she asked in a tone bordering of disbelief.

Kirk visibly bristled. “I believe that I inherited from my parents a stubborn nature and a healthy intellect.” He twisted in his seat, studied his mother’s face, pale with grief and exhaustion but stoic, and forced himself to speak in a level voice.

“I believe that while my heritage may have opened the Academy doors for me, my name also brought with it an increased level of scrutiny from my peers and professors as well as a set of expectations that few other cadets have ever experienced.  Mostly I believe that my work at the Academy is my own. My test scores are my own. I’ve earned my place.”

Arianna’s head bobbed in sharp approval of his answer.

“The Academy has suffered unheard of losses in recent days.  A great many instructors and cadets were killed in the battle above Vulcan with the heaviest casualties suffered by your class.”

Kirk dropped his head briefly as he thought of all the empty seats awaiting them when classes resumed.

“Has Starfleet indicated how they intend to deal with the impact of so great a loss of personnel at the Academy?”

“There will be a private memorial service held on campus tomorrow to be attended by the families of those lost, the surviving cadets and faculty. Classes will resume the next day with the graduating class on an accelerated schedule.”

“Do you think you and your classmates will be prepared for that?”

“I think Starfleet needs us to be prepared and will do everything in their power to make sure that we are ready when the time comes.”

Arianna nodded somberly.

He watched as she flicked a finger over the surface of the tablet in her hands, scrolling through her notes.

She paused and then looked up.

“Let’s switch gears a bit. Tell me about the Kobayashi Maru.”

Kirk blinked at the suddenness of the change of topic. It seemed obvious that she knew something but he was surprised that she had any information of what had transpired such a short time ago. Did a fellow cadet speak of it, he wondered, or was it possible that Starfleet had given her the information?

He glanced beyond Arianna’s shoulder where Lieutenant Dexter waited off camera and hesitated.  Though the official reprimand of his actions during his taking of the Kobayashi Maru had been discussed with several of the Admirals, it had not been covered in his briefing session with Media Affairs and he was unsure how best to answer. Unfortunately, the lieutenant was engrossed in looking at the PADD in her hands and did not seem to be aware of the line of questioning introduced by the talk show host.

He took a steadying breath and decided to forge ahead on his own. He waded carefully into potentially turbulent waters.

“What is it you would like to know?”

“Let’s just start with the basics. Please explain to those watching - what is the Kobayashi Maru?”

Kirk forced himself to release his grip on the arms of the chair he was seated in and folded his hands atop the table.

“It’s a graded simulation required to be taken by command track students.  In the simulation, the USS _Kobayashi Maru_ is a civilian ship which has been disabled and suffers a power loss.  The _Maru_ sends out a distress signal which is intercepted by a Starfleet vessel commanded by the cadet taking the test.”

He paused to take a sip of water from the cup near his elbow.

“It sounds like a fairly routine test.” Arianna commented. “But my understanding is that no cadet has ever beaten it – that is, until you.”

Kirk ignored the bait.

“The position of the stranded ship is within the Neutral Zone,” he explained. “The only possible way to save the crew of the _Maru_ is for the cadet to take his or her ship into the Neutral Zone where it will immediately be confronted by multiple Klingon warbirds and destroyed by their superior firepower.”

He raised his hands palms-up in a sign of frustration.

“The only other alternative is to abandon the crew of the _Kobayashi Maru_ to the Klingons and, of course, no cadet can bring themselves to do that.  Almost every cadet makes the fatal decision to enter the Neutral Zone and suffers the loss of their ship and all hands as a result.”

“But _you_ beat it.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Arianna pursed her lips and sent him a narrow-eyed look.

“You installed a subroutine into the simulation’s program which altered the conditions of the test.”

“Someone’s been talking,” he commented blandly.

A broad smile wreathed her face and she leaned forward as if preparing to share a secret.

“My staff is very thorough.”

She settled back into her chair and crossed one leg over the other.

“You installed a subroutine…?” she prompted.

“Yes.”

“Some people would call that cheating,” she mused. “Do you?”

“Yes. I do.”

Arianna’s expression showed her genuine surprise at his response.

“Isn’t that grounds for expulsion?”

“It is.”

From the corner of his eye, Kirk became aware that Lieutenant Dexter was now paying very close attention to the discussion.  He folded his arms on top of the glossy surface of the table and leaned forward, trying to project an air of confidence.  

“If you would indulge me,” he said in an earnest tone, “I’d like to explain.”

Arianna waved a permissive hand for him to continue.

“What you have to understand from the outset is that the test itself is a cheat.  By that I mean that it is deliberately set up by the programmers to be unbeatable.”

“To what end?” Genuine confusion colored Arianna’s voice. “Why would the Academy set up its command track students for failure?”

“I’ve been told the principal lesson to be learned from the Kobayashi Maru is for the command student to ‘experience fear in the face of certain death’.”  Spock’s words were seared into his memory and he quoted them verbatim. “To accept that fear and maintain control of oneself and one’s crew.”

He met her gaze levelly.  “The test is not set up as an indicator of a cadet’s ability to problem solve,” he explained. “Its purpose is to take the measure of the man or woman in charge.”

“If the purpose of the test is intended as a judge of character, as you say, then why would you cheat to beat it?” Arianna asked. “Why put your career at risk?”

Kirk hesitated. He knew that the majority of his surviving classmates and professors believed that he had installed that subroutine out of a cocky desire to be the only cadet in Academy history to beat the test.

And though he was honest enough with himself to admit that he _had_ achieved a personal thrill by gaming the system the way he did, it was also important to him that people understand why.

He had left his meetings with the brass all but assured that in light of his performance in saving the _Enterprise_ in the battle over Vulcan and in the destruction of the _Narada,_ they were willing to look the other way with regards to his conduct during the Kobayashi Maru, but he knew that what he said now – and how he said it – would either bolster his support among the admirals, or weaken it. 

He rubbed a hand over his jaw and took his time formulating a response.

“I knew that the exam proctors and programmers would quickly find the subroutine I had installed,” he began. “At no point was I ever laboring under the assumption that they would not swiftly find out how I managed to beat the test.”

Arianna’s brow furrowed. “Then why do it in the first place?”

Kirk took a steadying breath.

“To be perfectly honest, the fact that no one had ever beaten the simulation – the fact that the test is designed to be unwinnable – angered me.”

She merely cocked her head to one side in silent invitation for him to continue.

He looked at her intently.

“The test is intended to teach cadets about the possibility of a no-win scenario. But I believe that is the wrong message for Starfleet to ingrain upon its next generation of captains. I don’t personally believe in the no-win situation.”

“But danger and death are as much part and parcel of the life of a member of Starfleet as are exploration and adventure,” she countered.

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “And I’m not trying to imply that I believe that everyone can be saved in every situation. We need to be prepared for destruction and loss. But I think we should be encouraged to think outside the box to mitigate the degree of such a loss whenever possible.”

He raised his hands in a supplicating gesture.

“I refused to accept that the Kobayashi Maru should be designed to be unwinnable in any circumstance. I installed that subroutine to make the point that cadets should be encouraged not only to learn to maintain control of themselves and their crew, but also to come to the understanding that anything should be game when it comes to the lives and deaths of that crew. I believe a captain has the duty to do whatever is necessary to buy time. Even a few additional seconds can be precious in outmaneuvering your opponent – whether that opponent is an enemy or death itself.”

He paused, looked down at his hands and then back up.  Though exhaustion was clearly etched on his face, his features were alive with the passion of his convictions. His eyes burned bright and blue, electric and striking with the intensity of his fervor.

Arianna studied him for one long, careful moment.

“This is a _cause_ for you,” she realized.

“It’s a lesson I learned at birth,” he said simply. “I am alive today because Captain Robau believed it. He parlayed with Nero on the _Narada_ knowing that he was putting his life on the line. He faced his own personal no-win situation in order to give the crew of the _Kelvin_ more time. My father –”

His voice caught and he cleared his throat before continuing.

“My father could have made it to an escape shuttle in time, but he knew that the best chance to protect my mother, me and the rest of the crew – to _buy us time to get away_ – lay with him remaining behind to provide cover fire. _That_ was the point I was trying to make when I installed that subroutine into the program.”

He forced himself to relax back into his chair.

“Please understand that I am not advocating cheating in ordinary situations. But in matters of life and death I believe that it is imperative that we learn to do what we can – to do what we must to _cheat death_ at every possible turn.”

Arianna allowed for a beat or two of silence as her audience absorbed his passionate words. Her head dipped in a nearly imperceptible nod before she lifted her gaze to the camera.

“We’re going to take a short break and then we’ll be back with more from James T. Kirk.”


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

 

"You're doing great." Arianna looked up from the quiet consultation she had been engaged in with one of her producers and sent her guest a reassuring a smile.

"Can we get you anything before we resume?" she asked.

Kirk rolled his head from side to side, wincing slightly at the popping noise made by the stressed joints in his neck. He had been operating on bits of sleep snatched here and there since they had warped to Vulcan and had marshalled every bit of remaining strength to get through his debriefings and summary appearance before the admirals. Exhaustion, along with the lingering aches and pains of the injuries he had sustained, was now taking its toll. Fatigue wrapped sneaky fingers around his head, throbbing behind his eyes and his brain felt fuzzy and unfocused.

"Coffee?" he asked hopefully, though his nerves were already dancing from an overload of caffeine and a fading rush of adrenaline.

Arianna motioned toward one of her assistants who appeared a moment later with a steaming cup of coffee and an energy bar. The young woman's heart fluttered as Kirk sent her a blindingly grateful smile. He gulped half the contents of the cup in one long swallow, washing down a huge bite of the energy bar.

"Ready?" Arianna asked.

The caffeine, along with the sugars and protein of the energy bar, hit his system, helping to clear away a bit of the fog and he nodded as he took his seat across from her.

"Ready."

"And we're back with our guest, Starfleet Cadet James T. Kirk." Arianna pasted a welcoming smile on her face, skillfully connecting with her audience as they came out of the break. "Jim, we got to know a little bit about you in our first segment and I would like to learn more as we go along. But I know that everyone watching is waiting and wanting to hear some of the details of what happened in the last week so I'd like to steer our conversation in that direction for a while."

"Of course," Jim readily agreed.

"My notes indicated that the _Enterprise_ was among eight ships which were hastily assembled to respond to the distress call emanating from the Vulcan High Command. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

Kirk leaned back in his chair, more comfortable relaying dry facts about the mission that he was discussing himself.

"Crews were quickly scrambled comprised of officers stationed at various outposts on or close to Earth, including some of the professors at the Academy, along with crew members who were stationed on Earth or nearby and a large number of senior cadets."

"It must have been complete chaos," Arianna mused.

"Controlled chaos," he acknowledged. "You understand, of course, that Starfleet regularly drills its personnel to respond to any number of situations, including emergency distress calls such as the one we received from Vulcan that day."

"But you've never drilled for anything such as what you actually encountered over Vulcan, have you?"

"We've drilled, of course, to respond to enemy incursions on the sovereign space of Federation planets." He spoke slowly, carefully choosing his words as he responded. "But as the crews were assembled and taking their posts, the prevailing belief was that Vulcan was experiencing some kind of _natural_ seismic activity. There was nothing in the distress call from the Vulcan High Command which would lead Starfleet to have any reasonable expectation of what was really going on. "

"I mean... what reasonable person could ever have predicted what was actually about to happen?" Kirk shook his head, sorrow darkening the vibrant blue of his gaze as the moment when an entire planet had blinked out of existence and simply ceased to be played in his mind's eye.

"It was a controlled chaos," he repeated. "There was a sense of urgency but no panic. Officers and crew members were moving hurriedly, but with purpose to quickly equip the ships and man their stations."

Arianna nodded. From her early years as the Starfleet correspondent for her news organization, she could easily envision the scene.

"I understand," she said. "What I'm trying to do with this line of questions is to help me paint a picture for our viewers of events as they happened. So, let's move along. Eight ships warped to Vulcan but the _Enterprise_ was the only one to return. Can you explain?"

Though his expression didn't show it, Kirk heaved an internal sigh of relief. It seemed that for all the research Arianna's staff had done in advance of his appearance on the show, how he came to be part of the _Enterprise_ crew had not been questioned. It was obvious they had assumed that he had been assigned to the ship along with his other crewmates and he was more than content to allow them to labor under that belief rather than to call attention to McCoy's deliberate disregard for regulations by smuggling him onboard under false pretenses.

"The _Enterprise_ was delayed in leaving the space dock," he told her. "The other ships warped out shortly before we did."

"What was the cause for the delay?"

"I wasn't on the bridge at the time we left space dock."

He implied a lack of knowledge of what had transpired to delay the _Enterprise_ 's departure though, of course, as acting captain he had later been made aware of everything that had taken place throughout the mission. But Sulu had saved his life twice - pulling him back up onto the drill over Vulcan and again when he had brought the _Enterprise_ back - weapons blazing - to take on the _Narada_. If the press got wind of Sulu's fumble on the bridge, it would not be because Kirk gave the story to them.

"Fair enough," Arianna said. "But the _Enterprise_ 's delay in warping away from space dock doesn't really explain how she avoided the fates of her sister ships. What made the difference," she asked. "Or, perhaps the question I should be asking is not what made the difference, but rather _who_."

Kirk opened his mouth, hesitated, and then shook his head.

"I know the answer already, Jim." She tapped her stylus on the screen of the PADD resting on her lap. "But my audience does not and I think they, and I, would like to hear from you exactly what happened. You're here to put us on that ship with you. To help all of us to understand what took place up there from someone intimately involved in the events as they unfolded."

Looking at him expectantly, she silently encouraged him to open up.

"As we got under way, there was a shipboard announcement." Glancing down at his hands, he hesitantly began to speak. "No. I probably need to start earlier than that," he corrected himself.

Looking up, he met her gaze directly. "The day before the attack, a classmate of mine - Cadet Uhura - had been working in the long-range sensor lab tracking solar systems when she picked up an emergency transmission from a Klingon prison planet regarding an attack on their armada and the destruction of forty-seven Klingon ships. I overheard her mention it and thought the information was interesting. But it was the night before I was scheduled to take the Kobayashi Maru."

His lips tipped up in a sad smile. "I admit I was so focused on the exam and my plans for beating it, that I didn't give Uhura's story further thought."

"How does an attack that took place in Klingon space connect with what happened to Vulcan?"

He dipped his head, acknowledging the confusion in her voice. "It wasn't until I heard the shipboard announcement once we were under warp to Vulcan that I began to connect the dots." He described the desperate race through the bowels of the ship to track down Uhura - though he left out any mention of his allergic reaction to the vaccine McCoy had dosed him with.

"Uhura confirmed that the Klingon armada had been attacked by a Romulan ship and that's when it all fell into place."

"I'm afraid that I'm not 'connecting the dots' as you put it, as easily as you did," Arianna noted wryly. "Perhaps you can help me make the connection."

"The announcement made on board _Enterprise_ was that an anomaly in the form of a lightning storm in space was detected in the Neutral Zone and soon after that, Vulcan High Command issued a distress call referencing seismic activity on the planet."

He absentmindedly traced a finger around and around the rim of his coffee mug.

"You understand that lightning storms are not a natural occurrence in space, right?"

Arianna nodded and gestured toward him to continue.

"There is only one other known incidence of lightning in space." Kirk stared intently into his host's eyes. "Numerous survivors of the _Kelvin_ reported having witnessed a lightning storm just prior to the appearance of their Romulan attackers."

"And you suspected that the same thing was occurring over Vulcan."

"I _knew_ it," he corrected. "And once Uhura confirmed that it had been Romulans who had attacked the Klingons, we raced to the bridge to report our findings to the captain." He shrugged. "We were at red alert and had our shields up when we came out of warp over Vulcan. The rest of the fleet had no such warning."

He rubbed a hand over his jaw before taking a sip of his now rapidly cooling coffee.

"I don't know. If I had made the connection sooner, we could have warned the others. Maybe have given some of them a fighting chance..."

Arianna remained silent, allowing the emotions of the moment to play out for a beat or two.

"And then what?" she asked softly.

"I could describe it to you in infinite detail," he told her, "and you still wouldn't be able to fathom the scope of the destruction we encountered when we came out of warp. The debris field was massive." Mindful of the families of the victims of the attack, he chose his words carefully, keeping the focus on Pike's commands and Sulu's skilled hands on the controls and away from the horrific sight of bodies tumbling through space and countless fires flickering within the decimated remains of the rest of the fleet.

Admiration and pride rang in his voice as he spoke of Pike's calm commands and his decision to try to buy time while they attempted to take out the Romulan drill.

"Just before we boarded the shuttle, he turned control of the ship over to Commander Spock."

"And named you as First Officer."

"Yes."

"Why do you think he chose you?"

"I don't know."

"Really?" She cocked her head to one side, gazing at him thoughtfully. "You don't strike me as a young man crippled by self-doubt."

Kirk arched his brows and sent her a tight-lipped smile. "That's true enough," he said. "No one who knows me would accuse me of lacking confidence. But I honestly don't know why Captain Pike chose me for that position. The crew consisted of mostly cadets, but there were some officers aboard who, simply by their years of experience, would be considered more qualified than I to assume that position. You'll have to ask him."

"Will you ask him?"

Kirk's mouth quirked in a self-deprecating grin.

"Probably."

"How did Captain Pike choose the members of the away team sent to disable the drill?"

"He named me to the team and asked for volunteers. Mr. Sulu volunteered."

"But you didn't."

"I didn't have time. Captain Pike had already named me to the away team."

"Why you?"

"Why not me?" Kirk bristled.

Arianna raised a placating hand. "If he had already planned to appoint you as the acting First Officer, why not leave you on the ship? Surely there was someone else on board he could have assigned to the away team."

"There wasn't a lot of time to go through a crew roster," Kirk pointed out dryly. "Captain Pike knew that I serve as assistant instructor for advanced hand-to-hand combat at the Academy. And, as you know, it is common for the First Officer to lead an away team."

"Okay," Arianna conceded. "The plan as I understand it was to space jump from the shuttle and land on the Romulan drill." She pursed her lips and shook her head. "What is that even like? Can you describe it to us?"

Searching for the right words, he gave a short laugh.

"Your stomach drops out from under you when the cargo bay doors open and all you can see is space and very distantly the planet more than twenty thousand meters below. Then you're bulleting through space toward the planet surface." He lowered his voice and held himself very still. "It's deathly quiet in space - there is a complete absence of any noise and so the sound of your own breathing is amplified inside the helmet. You can actually _hear_ your pulse pounding in your ears."

"And then you punch through the atmosphere and there is a rush of noise - a wall of sound, not unlike a sonic boom - and you go from the cold stillness of space to a wave of sensations - heat from the planet's sun and the roar of the wind buffeting you as you hurtle through the air. It can be... disconcerting."

"There were three of you who made the jump."

"Yes. _Enterprise's_ Chief Engineer Olson was part of the away team."

"He didn't make it?" Arianna noted softly.

"No." Kirk looked down and swirled the dregs of coffee about in his mug. Though he privately believed that Olson had been overly amped-up about the mission and that it was the engineer's showboating refusal to pull his chute in time which had caused his death, Kirk knew that Olson's family and friends may well be watching the interview and so he chose his words with care.

"As I said, orbital space diving can be disconcerting. It can muddy your reflexes. Olson did not deploy his chute in time and unfortunately, he made the ultimate sacrifice in trying to disable the drill."

Arianna narrowed her eyes briefly. An experienced journalist, she knew Kirk was whitewashing the story, but as there was only so much time, and so many more avenues for her to pursue, she chose to move forward.

"You and Sulu landed safely."

"More or less." He quickly described tumbling onto the top of the drill, desperately clutching for a handhold, wind gusts tearing at the open chute before he was able to close it again.

"And did you meet any resistance?"

"More or less," he repeated, a lethal grin slashing over his face. Looking to lighten things a bit, he described his reaction upon learning that Sulu's combat training was in the art of fencing.

"Fencing. That's all he said in this incredibly cool and confident manner." He laughed, clapping a hand against his forehead and letting his mouth fall open for comic effect. "I remember thinking 'keep it cool, man, keep it cool' but it was a struggle. In my head all I could see was him brandishing a little epÃ©e about and I was terrified." He laughed again. "But then he whipped out this collapsible sword." His eyes widened in remembered admiration. "He was like a samurai warrior come to life.

"If fencing is Mr. Sulu's field of expertise in combat training - can you tell us what is yours?"

He leaned back in his chair with an embarrassed shrug.

"I'm a brawler, ma'am. I'd like to lay claim to having some finesse but that would be a lie. I'm good with my fists, I won't hesitate to kick the knees out from under an opponent and I'll use anything I can get my hands on as a weapon."

"You were able to disable the drill," she prompted.

"We were." He described using the Romulan disrupters on the power source and under Arianna's probing queries, painted a picture of Sulu's tumble from the drill platform, his failed rescue attempt and their free fall towards the planet's surface.

"You thought diving off the drill after him was a good idea?" she asked dryly.

"It didn't seem like I had much of a choice," Kirk replied with a shrug. "In theory it should have worked but I guess my chute was damaged - it couldn't support our combined weight. Thankfully _Enterprise_ was able to get a lock on us and beam us back onboard."

Arianna nodded and glanced down at her notes. She allowed several long beats of silence to pass before looking back up, a solemn expression painted on her face.

"Now, Jim, we've come to the heart of the matter - the destruction of Vulcan. I know this will be terribly difficult for you - for all of us - but I would like you, please, in your own words, to tell us what happened next."

He nodded jerkily, drawing in deep breath and slowly releasing it.

"I honestly don't know that there is any being who can accurately describe that moment," he began in a subdued voice. "I'm good with languages and yet there simply aren't words adequate to explain. To say that it was a horror or that it was overwhelmingly sad isn't enough."

Swamped by the elder Spock's memories of the destruction of Vulcan which had been imparted to him during the hasty mind meld, Kirk was briefly overcome. The studio lights caught the tears glistening in his blue eyes.

"One moment, Vulcan was there," he said, voice cracking on the words. He rubbed a hand over his jaw, trying to hide the wobble of his chin as he swallowed against the tears clogging his throat. "Seconds later it - and billions of its inhabitants were just... gone."

He pressed his fist against his mouth and stared across the table to see unexpected tears standing in Arianna's eyes.

"Your mind simply cannot process it," he continued gruffly. "Planetside, I know there was violence - fire and debris and explosions. But it was shockingly peaceful to witness from above. It just..." His shoulders rose and fell in a helpless shrug. "It just blinked out of existence."

He knuckled a tear away from his eye and cleared his throat. Taking a hasty sip of water, he stared fixedly at the surface of the table as Arianna allowed a long moment of silence to allow everyone there in the studio and the audience watching from their homes to regain their composure.

Looking up, he was aware that she was listening to something in her earpiece before focusing on him again.

"Jim." Her own emotional response to the picture he had painted with his words was evident in the rawness of her voice as she spoke. "We're due for a segment break here, but if you're up to it, I'd like to keep going for now."

"That's fine."

"I think that we could do an entire program on the destruction of Vulcan and not begin to scrape the surface of the magnitude of what that loss means not only to the remaining Vulcian population, but to the entire Federation," she continued. "And we will be doing just that in the upcoming days, but for now, I would like to move on."

He spread his hands wide and nodded.

"Of course."

He knew from his briefing with Commander Parsons that there were events he could not discuss - incidents which had been deemed as classified by Starfleet. He knew too that despite Arianna's prideful boast at the top of the show of the skill of her research team, any information she had gleaned had been done with the full knowledge of Starfleet, even if it was simply a matter of them having turned a blind eye to her researchers' digging. He knew from a lifetime of experience that matters Starfleet wished to remain classified remained so until formally declassified.

With that in mind, he used his charm, wits and an occasional dose of gee-whiz-oh-shucks-small-town-boy bashfulness when necessary to dodge, redirect or outright evade some of her more probing questions, falling back only once or twice on admitting that he was unauthorized to divulge some aspects of their mission.

And so no mention was made of his argument with Spock bordering on mutiny, nor was the public made aware of his subsequent marooning on Delta Vega or meeting with the Ambassador from an alternate timeline.

"In the wake of the destruction of Vulcan, Commander Spock declared himself emotionally compromised and passed command of the ship to me," he said, conveniently avoiding any discussion of the means by which he had provoked the Commander into revealing his compromised state.

"Captain Pike's last orders before departing the _Enterprise_ were to join the rest of the fleet in the Laurentian system."

"Yes."

"But you chose to ignore those orders. Why?"

"By our calculations, the _Narada_ was heading for Earth. There was no time to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet. I ordered an immediate pursuit and worked with the rest of the bridge crew to come up with a plan to stop Nero."

"You and Commander Spock boarded the _Narada_."

"Yes. We were determined to retrieve the black hole device before it could be used against another Federation planet."

As she questioned him, Kirk led her through the plan to conceal the _Enterprise_ in Titan's magnetic field and his and Spock's boarding of the _Narada_. He touched briefly on his one-on-one confrontation with Nero and spoke with obvious admiration of Spock's deft handling of the small, agile ship. He described in detail the game of chicken played unblinkingly by Spock against the much larger _Narada_ and how the distraction had provided him with enough time and cover to retrieve Captain Pike.

"The black hole device detonated within the _Narada_ ," Arianna noted.

"That's correct. Commander Spock had set his ship, containing the black hole device, on a collision course with the Romulan ship. Thankfully Mr. Scott was able to beam the Commander back to the _Enterprise_ before impact."

"What happened next?"

"Commander Spock and I immediately returned to the bridge and were informed that the enemy ship was losing power and that its shield were down. I had Lieutenant Uhura open a channel to the Romulan ship."

"You offered them assistance."

"Yes."

"Why? After all the destruction they had caused, beginning with the attack on the _Kelvin_ all those years ago."

"I had hoped that by showing compassion, it would go some way toward earning peace with Romulus when the dust settled."

"I'm going to stop you here, Jim," Arianna said before looking directly toward her audience. "Starfleet has released to us a small segment of the audio and video data recordings taken from the bridge of the _Enterprise_ during the final confrontation with the _Narada_. There have only been a few prior instances when Starfleet has seen fit to make public this kind of data but they felt it important that Federation - and non-Federation planets, including Romulus, be made aware of what actually happened during those crucial final moments. What you will see is the raw footage - we have not altered it in any manner."

The video had been taken from a recording device mounted above the turbolift doors, its wide-angle lens allowing for views of the main view screen as well as the command chair, the helm, science and communications stations.

_"This is Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Your ship is compromised; too close to the singularity to survive without assistance, which we are willing to provide."_

Kirk watched as he and Spock turned away, heads close so that their whispered conversation was unintelligible on the recording before Nero's voice - dripping with pride and hatred - drew their attention back to the view screen.

_"I would rather suffer the end of Romulus a thousand times. I would rather die in agony than accept assistance from you."_

_"You got it. Arm phasers. Fire everything we've got."_

Arianna lifted a finger, signaling her producer to halt the recording at that point.

"You said yourself that the _Narada_ was crippled and unable to break free of the singularity. Why open fire?"

Kirk hesitated, unsure of how to answer without saying anything about the alternate universe created when the _Narada_ had slipped through the black hole along with the Ambassador's ship all those years prior. He could only barely imagine the uproar it would create should billions of Federation inhabitants suddenly realize they each had counterparts living completely different lives in another timeline.

"I..." He raised his hands in a helpless gesture. "I wanted to be sure," he said simply. "I did not want to take a chance that Nero or his crew would survive to threaten the Federation again in another twenty-five years."

"Understandable." She cocked her head to one side and gave him an apprising look. "But I'd like to talk a little about what it was like for you to confront - and defeat - the man responsible for your father's death. Was there a sense of satisfaction? Was revenge even a tiny part of your motivation?"

He had known there was no way to avoid this. George Kirk's heroic actions to save his wife and newborn son had instantly become legend and twenty-five years later, the public's fascination with his family's story had never fully waned.

"Revenge? No. I would not have offered assistance had I been seeking revenge. Satisfaction? I guess my answer would have to be yes - to some degree. I'm happy to know that the black hole device has been destroyed and that Nero and his crew are no longer a threat to the Federation and our way of life."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"But as for the rest of it - I can't say that I spent a lot of time thinking about it. From the moment we warped away from Earth in response to the Vulcan distress call to the time we caught up with the _Narada_ -“ it all happened so quickly. It would be a lie to pretend that in my life I never gave thought to Nero and the _Kelvin_ and my father. The survival of the _Kelvin_ crew, the survival of my mother - my birth - it all hinged on my father's death. I've seen enough images of him to know that I bear a striking resemblance to him. People look at me and they see him. They see his sacrifice. All my life, I've felt an enormous pressure to live up to him. To make his sacrifice worth something and I've rebelled against that time and time again from a very early age. I was drowning under the weight of all those expectations; of all of my failures and the trail of disappointment I left in my wake. I've spent the majority of my life wondering who I would be had my father lived."

He shook his head and his laugh was sharp and bitter.

"But no. In that final confrontation with Nero, I wasn't focused on the personal. Having witnessed the destruction of Vulcan, I needed no other motivation than the desperate need to stop Nero before he could wipe out another planet."

"I can't help but wonder what the outcome would have been had anyone else been sitting in that chair," Arianna mused. "I think we were lucky it was you."

"No. You need to understand that this was a group effort." He leaned forward in his seat, urgency in every line of his body. "If Uhura hadn't intercepted the distress call from the Klingon prison planet; if Spock hadn't backed up my argument to Pike. If Chekov hadn't figured out how to shield the ship from detection and if Sulu hadn't been able to maneuver the ship into position. If Mr. Scott hadn't been able to beam Spock, Captain Pike and me back before the _Narada_ was destroyed..."

He shook his head back and forth.

"Cadets in the command track are taught from the very first day that a captain is only as good as his or her crew. My job was to marshal their talents and get the best from them. The entire crew performed admirably - more so than any crew made up mostly of untested cadets and a few green officers should have performed."

"And yet, there were others - including Captain Pike and Commander Spock - who believed the best course of action was to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet and it was only after _you_ took command that the decision was made to chase down the _Narada_. As I understand it, you were relentless in your goal to stop him."

He huffed out a tired laugh. "Yeah. I guess that's as good a way to describe it as any."

"So again, I posit the theory that the outcome would have been very different had you not taken command - had you not disregarded your orders to join up with the fleet and instead pursued Nero."

"Is there any way you could rephrase that?" Kirk winced and let out a low chuckle. "Starfleet does not take kindly to cadets who defy orders." He offered a wry grin in an effort to lighten the moment.

"Given the results you achieved, Jim, I think you're relatively safe," she smiled.

_'Relatively' being the operative word,_ Jim thought privately as concerns for his future swam to the surface of his mind.

"How are you doing?" Arianna asked. "We've been talking for quite a long time now and we'll be taking a break very soon..."

"I'm good."

When the camera shifted its focus back to the host, an assistant darted forward to silently slide a fresh glass of water near his hand.

"There are those who believe that some people are singled out from everyone else and meant for greatness," Arianna began. "They believe that some higher power or perhaps fate or destiny protects those individuals from the consequences that others might suffer because they have an important role to play in history."

She paused for a single beat and then,

"Do you believe _you_ are one such individual?"

"I..." Perplexed, he shook his head. "I don't -"

She glanced down, consulting her notes.

"I ask because three times in your young life you have survived when so many others around you have not and I think we all cannot help but wonder why."

His shoulders rose and fell on an uncomfortable shrug.

"Luck, I guess."

"The first time, of course, is already well known. As we've briefly touched on already, you are the famous " _Kelvin_ baby" who survived that fatal attack.

"There were _eight hundred_ survivors of the _Kelvin_ ," he pointed out, "and I wholly attribute my survival to my parents' actions and not some random notion of fate."

He felt his hackles rise when she bobbed her in what seemed to him like dismissive manner as she pressed forward with her own theory.

"So, we have your survival at birth and we've spent a great deal of time discussing the events of the last week," she said ticking numbers off on her fingers. "But I'm thinking of a little known event from your childhood, when you survived against all odds."

He guessed that she had learned from someone back in Iowa about his breakneck race across the outskirts of Riverside in his father's vintage convertible and the death defying leap he had made at the last minute as the car plunged over the edge of the ravine into the quarry below.

Had he been paying complete attention, he would have noted that though her expression remained placidly interested, her eyes shone with suppressed excitement. But his mind was racing to come up with a plausible sounding explanation for the workings of his ten year old mind and as such he was only half listening to her words.

"Let's talk about Tarsus IV."

 

 


	4. 4

In the wings, a self-satisfied smile trembled at the corners of Lieutenant Dexter's mouth as she heard the muffled gasps of those standing around her. A wave of shock seemed to engulf the production crew and they all fell silent, mesmerized by what was happening on set.

She hugged her tablet to her chest with barely repressed joy as she imagined one day calling in the chip she now held over Arianna for handing her this breathtaking scoop on a silver platter.

Her communicator chirped and she flipped it open

"Dexter here," she murmured into the small device.

"You get into that control room and you shut this interview down now!" Commander Parson's voice was low and filled with rage.

"Sir - I - "

"Now, Lieutenant."

She began to make her way to the control room on suddenly trembling limbs.

"Do you think I don't know you're the one who leaked that Tarsus information?" Parsons hissed angrily.

"I found it easily enough when doing a background check on his Starfleet records," Dexter stammered in self-defense. "It's not classified."

"Not officially, but it's understood as such! It's part of his juvenile records, Lieutenant! Starfleet does not serve its children up on a plate for the entertainment of others!"

"Cadet Kirk is hardly a child, sir." Her mind was racing, looking for a way out of this and she feared her career in Starfleet would be short-lived. She may have to call that chip in with Arianna sooner than expected.

"What the hell were you thinking, Lieutenant?" Parsons growled in her ear. "Do I need to remind you that after the losses we've just suffered we need Kirk to help bring in new, eager recruits?" he ranted. "And he was doing just that - the perfect mix of youth and confidence and heroism. And now look at him - instead of a young hero - he looks like a confused and distraught boy! You get in there and you stop this. NOW!" he roared before cutting off communication with her.

On set, Arianna did not need to hear the urgent chatter of her producer in her ear to know that she had miscalculated badly. With her words, color had flooded into Kirk's cheeks and had just as quickly been leeched away leaving him looking pale, shaken and achingly young. And she knew any pursuit of this line of questioning would be perceived by the public as an attack on this young man whom they had taken to their hearts. She silently chided herself for falling into the trap of being seduced by such a sensational story without first thinking through her approach. She prided herself on a career of avoiding "gotcha" journalism and she was horrified at how easily she had succumbed to it today. Rather than the apex of her career to date, she now recognized it as a self-inflicted wound to her carefully nurtured reputation.

Painfully long seconds of empty airtime ticked by as she mentally scrambled for a graceful way to end the interview, all the while dimly aware of the frantic murmurings of the occupants of the control room in her earpiece.

Blindsided by her words, Kirk stared down at his fisted hands atop the table as he too struggled to find a way out of this mess. He vacillated between fight and flight and in the end, as always, he chose to fight.

With a slow blink, he began to come back to himself. Gone was the affable, earnest young cadet and in his place was a confident, determined - _angry_ \- man. Arianna and her audience watched as he seemed to pull an invisible mantle of control around himself and the cadet gave way to the captain.

"I'm curious how you got your information." The low growl of his voice was startling after the excruciatingly uncomfortable period of silence. "Do you consider it your journalistic duty to break into records that were sealed when I was a child? Or do you have a source?"

A movement beyond Arianna's shoulder caught his eye and he saw Lieutenant Dexter engaged in what appeared to be a frantic conversation with someone on her communicator and he knew. Rallying himself, he crooked the fingers of one hand toward his host in an age-old gesture for her to bring it on. If he was going to be subjected to this, then he was going to take as much command of the situation as possible.

"What do you want to know?"

"Then it's true? You were there?" Though still mentally lashing out at herself, Arianna fell back on years of professional experience in an effort to salvage the remainder of the interview.

"Yes."

"You couldn't have been more than... what? Twelve? Thirteen years old?"

"Twelve when I arrived. I was thirteen when all hell broke loose."

His irritation with the line of questioning was evident in the curtness of his responses.

"How did you come to be on Tarsus?"

"My older brother had just left home for college and my mother was active Starfleet at the time with orders that would take her off planet for eighteen months to two years. She had a younger cousin who had relocated to Tarsus IV with her husband. My mother asked me if I wanted to go live with them while she was away. It sounded like an adventure. So I went."

"How long were you there before things began to go badly?"

"I arrived about ten months before the colonists began to realize the crops were failing. Less than a month after that Kodos decided what to do about it."

"What can you tell us about Governor Kodos?"

"What is there to say?" Kirk clenched his hands into fists. "He was a murderer."

"There are those who believe that he had reasons for - "

"No!" Instinctively recognizing where she was going, Kirk sliced his hand through the air to cut her off. "There will always be people who will try to make excuses, to find reasons for why men do evil things. Men throughout history like Kodos who try to rationalize their barbaric acts."

He shook his head back and forth in rapid denial of the validity of such excuses.

"Kodos spent less than two weeks determining the fates of four thousand colonists. Deciding who was worthy of a chance to live and who was expendable. All based on some arbitrary calculation he came up with rooted in his personal theories about eugenics. Not surprisingly, Kodos and all who were close to him or loyal to him, were miraculously deemed necessary to the survival of the colony."

He shook his head back and forth in disgust.

" _Four thousand_ people! Men and women in the prime of their lives. Infants and children who never had a chance to reach theirs. How can we ever know what and who we lost as a result of his action? Maybe one of those murdered would have gone on to become a future President of the Federation. Perhaps one or more of those children would have grown up to become brilliant medical researchers who would have helped to eradicate a dangerous disease or maybe one of those killed would have been a voice of reason who would help to broker a lasting peace with the Romulans or Klingons."

He pressed his knuckles against his mouth for a moment.

"We'll never know because of Kodos and his lists."

Ignoring the frantic notes she had scribbled onto her device after receiving Lieutenant Dexter's bombshell information, Arianna set it aside and folded her arms atop the table leaning toward him.

"And you were on the list of those worthy to survive," she surmised, shocked when he gave a negative jerk of his head.

"I don't know for sure, but I believe I was on the list to be terminated," he said in a strained voice. The breath left his lungs on a shaky sigh and he stared downward, tracing some imaginary pattern onto the glossy surface of the table. "At first we didn't realize what was going on," he said softly. "Rumors were flying about people disappearing - adults not showing up for work or children missing classes. And as the days passed, the adults would gather in groups, urgently whispering to one another while pretending everything was okay, but... children always know more than adults are willing to believe."

He looked up and met her eyes with his own.

"And then word started slipping out that people weren't simply disappearing, but that they were being rounded up and taken from their homes by Kodos' security forces. No one knew what was happening to those missing, but there was an overwhelming sense of anxiety."

He stared at some point over her shoulder, his gaze unfocused as he was swept back in time.

"One day we heard the soldiers were approaching our neighborhood. My cousin started shoving what little food we had left into a backpack along with first aid supplies and few other necessities and then she made me put it on. Her husband handed me a fully charged phaser and a hunting knife. He pushed me out the back door and told me to hide."

"They didn't go with you?"

"I wanted them to. We argued about it for a few minutes, but my cousin was eight months pregnant with twins and..." He worried his lower lip between his teeth and shook his head. "There was no way she could run and he wouldn't leave her."

He rubbed his hand over his jaw and closed his eyes as the memory of those final moments washed over him.

_"NO!! I'll stay with you! I'll stay and we'll fight."_

_"Jimmy, no. You have to go."_

_"But Maggie_... _the babies_... _"_

_"Are my responsibility. You're our responsibility too. Maggie and I promised your mom that we'd protect you. You don't want to make liars of us do you?"_

He remembered the tears streaming down his cousin's pale cheeks as she hugged him, the frantic thumping of her heart against his, the press of one of the babies' foot against his stomach and the fierce set of her husband's jaw belied by the poorly concealed worry in his eyes.

_"Go now, Jim," Maggie whispered. "While there's still time."_

"I ran," he confessed, words muffled behind the fingers agitatedly plucking at his lower lip. "I left them."

"You were a child," Arianna noted softly. "You did what they told you to do."

"Yeah." His chin wobbled as he fought back the sob that wanted to escape.

"You hid. Where?"

The breath escaped his lungs on a long, sad sigh.

"As far as I could tell there were a number of security members fanned out through the neighborhood. I didn't think I could get far so I... There was this big tree behind the house - great for climbing. I used to go there all the time to read or study or play games on my handheld. I climbed as high and as quickly as I could and I hid in the leaf canopy."

He swallowed hard against the lump lodged in his throat.

"I could see about twelve houses from my hiding spot. I saw my cousins and several dozen others forced out of their homes and onto vehicles while others were left cowering in their doorways... In most cases entire families were taken together but there were a few children left behind - wailing in the streets as they were torn from their parents' arms."

His chest heaved and he felt bile rise into his throat at the memory.

"The terror was palpable - you could almost taste it in the air. People were crying - screaming - neighbors calling out to one another; shouting at the guards. People who were left behind trying to fight their way past the soldiers to pull the others down from the vehicles."

He fell silent, a muscle ticking furiously in the tightly clenched line of his jaw.

"I could hear the soldiers tearing my cousins' house apart and I knew they were looking for me. I shimmied up even higher in the tree and held on for dear life as they walked around outside, calling my name."

He wiped a shaking hand over his mouth.

"I stayed up there all day, one arm wrapped around the trunk of the tree, the phaser clutched in my free hand. Sometime in the middle of the night, when I was sure they were gone, I slipped down from the tree and ran."

"Where did you go?"

"There were a series of caves outside of the developed area of the colony - my friends and I used to ride our hover bikes out there all the time." He shrugged one shoulder. "It took me two days on foot - I ran through the night and found another tree to hide in during the day. "When I finally reached it, some kids were already there."

"How did you survive all that time until rescue arrived?"

"Because at the very heart of it - Kodos was dead wrong. Maybe - eventually - half the population would have died if Starfleet hadn't arrived when they did. But it would have been survival of the fittest - not a genocide based on one man's theory of worth."

He shook his head in disgust.

"We worked together. The older kids foraged for food, hunted what little wildlife was still available. A lot of people were scared and protected their supplies of food by any means possible - even killing to do so. But many of those who had been marked for survival _helped_ those of us who escaped. They shared their meager rations with us. Formed an underground railroad of sorts and helped hide us from roving bands of Kodos' troops, all at peril to their own lives."

He wiped a shaking hand over his mouth.

"And despite that, there were so many days when there was nothing to eat. The little ones crying because their bellies hurt. Sick and feverish and calling out for their parents who had been murdered by Kodos."

His eyes were unfocused, gaze turned inward as the memories washed over him.

"I'll never forget."

He raised a glass of water to his mouth with trembling fingers and took a sip. Clearing his throat, he fixed her with a hard gaze.

"Is that what you wanted to know?" he asked bitterly. "Or do you and your audience need more detail? Shall I tell you about the four year old girl who died in my arms, shaking with fever and begging for something to eat? Will it help your ratings if I talk about how I lost more than a third of my weight and had to spend weeks in the hospital after being rescued? About how I had to learn to stop hoarding and hiding food after I got back home? Or how I woke up with nightmares every single night for years after? Or maybe I should go into detail on the survivor's guilt I felt then and how this line of questioning brings it all back and that I know that when I close my eyes tonight those nightmares will return?"

"Maybe you want to know about how I blamed Starfleet and the Federation for not bothering to do a psych evaluation on Kodos before they put the lives of eight thousand colonists into his hands," he snarled, rage evident in every line of his face. "Or for not knowing until after more than four thousand people were murdered on Tarsus IV that there should be a procedure in place to immediate dispatch a ship to investigate when they suddenly lose contact with a colony."

The rage left as suddenly as it had come over him and he sagged in his chair, exhausted.

"I spent so much of my life hating Starfleet - for my father's death. For Tarsus. I wanted nothing to do with it and I was letting that hatred color every aspect of my life. Until Captain Pike found me and challenged me to enlist and work to change what I thought was wrong from within."

"Like the Kobayashi Maru," Arianna noted softly.

"Yeah," he said with a watery chuckle. "Like that."

"Jim. I owe you an apology." Resting her elbows on the table, she leaned toward him. "I had no right. I like to think of myself as a professional and in this instance I left all of that behind in pursuit of a sensational story as if the tragedy of what you endured on Tarsus IV was nothing more than a bit of juicy celebrity gossip. I ambushed you tonight, plain and simple. There is nothing I can say to take back what I've put you through except to promise that it is not a mistake I will make again."

She looked directly into the camera, apologizing to her audience as well, before signing off with a grave farewell.

"We're out."

Arianna nodded at her director and rose to her feet unsure what to say to the young man who was slumped in his chair as if he had just taken a physical beating. Her producer left the control booth and crossed to her side, murmuring softly in her ear.

"Jim," she called quietly, watching as he raised dazed eyes to meet hers. "I'm sorry to tell you that a large crowd - mostly press and the paparazzi - has assembled outside. I... we're working on a way to get you out of here."

"I can take him." Arianna's assistant, Kori, stepped forward. "They'll be expecting him to leave with the Lieutenant. We send her out in the Starfleet-issued vehicle with the back windows tinted and they'll follow her. I've got a pretty beat up old ride down on the lowest level of the underground parking deck. They'll never even look twice."

Arianna's staff hustled to put the plan into operation and as Kirk slipped into the passenger seat, Kori hit the control to tint the windows.

"Where to? Should I take you back to your dorm, or..."

"Can you take me to Starfleet Medical instead?"

"Sure. Are you alright? Do you - do you need a doctor?"

"No," Kirk sighed, closing his eyes and leaning his head back. "Just someone I need to visit."

*********

Epilogue

Ninety minutes later, Kori - having taken a long and circuitous route toward Starfleet Headquarters and the medical center housed nearby in the hopes of shaking off anyone who might have been following them, Jim entered the hospital. Walking through the halls of the hospital, he kept his head down, painfully aware of the stares and whispers that followed in his wake. Arriving at his destination, he saw Pike sitting up in bed, his attention riveted on something on his handheld. Jim could easily guess what had his mentor so engrossed and with a grimace, he raised a hand to knock on the doorframe.

"Requesting permission to enter, Captain."

"That's 'Almost Admiral, to you, Cadet."

Kirk's spine drew erect as he snapped to attention, heels clicking smartly, right hand rising until his fingertips grazed his temple in a stiff-armed salute. A grin trembled on his lips, threatening to ruin the precision of his military posture when Pike knuckled an imaginary tear from beneath his eye.

"Who knew that boy I scraped off the floor a bar would turn into such a model depiction of a Starfleet officer?" he drawled.

"Actually, as I recall, you did, sir," Kirk replied while maintaining his rigid pose.

"Oh yeah," Pike drawled.  "I did." He waved a careless hand toward the visitor's chair. "At ease, Cadet."

Kirk collapsed into the chair in a boneless sprawl, relaxed in the company of his mentor.

"So... Admiral, huh? Congratulations."

Pike grunted and rolled his eyes.

"I don't suppose you can be an Admiral and still command a starship?"

A shadow passed over the older man's face and he turned his head to stare toward the window.

"Sir?" Kirk leaned forward in his chair. "What are the doctors saying?" He waved an impotent hand toward Pike's legs, hidden beneath a blanket.

"Don't you and that friend of yours ever talk?"

"Bones?" Kirk snorted. "He never tells me anything. Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that." He shrugged. "The only thing he's told me is that you're improving and that he believes you will regain use of your legs."

He hesitated, his expression taut with worry. "Has someone else told you differently? Is Bones wrong?"

"No. Everyone agrees with Doctor McCoy that with a great deal of therapy I will be able to walk again."

Kirk's shoulders slumped in relief.

"Good," he sighed. "That's really good news."

"But it's going to take a long time. More time than Starfleet has. They can't wait for me to recover. When the _Enterprise_ ships out again, it will be with a new captain."

"I'm... I'm disappointed," Kirk said gruffly. "I had hoped to serve under you and learn from you after graduation."

"I would have liked that, Jim."

The two men sat quietly for a long moment, lost in the disappointment of shattered plans.

"Sir..." Kirk hesitated before continuing. "I just... I wanted to thank you."

"For what?"

"For scraping me off that barroom floor. I was going nowhere fast until you came along." He lifted his gaze to meet the older man's. "I... you have to know that anything I achieve will be thanks to you."

Pike graced him with a fond smile. "Son, I believe you've got it backwards. It's I who owes you a debt of gratitude."

Kirk looked up, a shocked expression on his face.

"If you hadn't come back for me..." Pike continued.

"I was just following your orders."

"I should reprimand you. You were in command of the _Enterprise_ and you should have gotten back to the ship as soon as possible - not wasted time looking for me. But if you hadn't, I would have been sucked into that black hole along with the _Narada_.  And since I am profoundly grateful to still be alive, I can't find it in me to chastise you."

Pike took a deep breath, clearing the lump from his throat.

"I owe you my life. We _all_ owe you our lives."

"Sir..."

"No, you listen to me. I've been reading about you." He waved the tablet in his hands. "And I watched that interview of yours."

Kirk ducked his head, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment.

"What are you ashamed of? Is it because she blindsided you in that interview and you stumbled for a minute?"

"No Sir. I..." He shook his head, unable to explain.

"Then what is it? Is it Tarsus?"

"I'd rather not talk about that again, sir."

"And no one should force you to. Especially not on intergalactic media the way that woman hit you from nowhere."

"Well, she had a hot lead," Kirk muttered bitterly.

"And you should know that Lieutenant Dexter is being dealt with."

"Already? How so?"

"She was in line for a promotion to Lieutenant Commander. Any discussion of promotion has been removed from the table and there's talk about shipping her to space station K-7 to serve as their media liason."

Kirk's lips twitched into a smile. "Can't imagine there's much need for a media liason on K-7."

"No," Pike drawled with a satisfied smile. "I don't think this posting is going to do much for her career."

The smirk faded from Kirk's lips and he stared pensively at something outside the window.

"What is it, Jim?"

"I just... I hate that everyone knows. It's only been a couple of hours and people are already staring and gossiping. What if... what if no matter what else I accomplish in my career, Tarsus IV is the thing that defines me?"

Pike huffed out an incredulous laugh. "Oh, son. After everything you've done in the last week, you can't possibly believe that." He shrugged his shoulders. "Look, your experiences on Tarsus are private and should stay that way unless _you_ say otherwise. But you seem almost ashamed. Why is that?"

A flush staining his cheeks, Kirk kept his gaze stubbornly locked on some distant point outside the window.

"I just don't understand," he said slowly. "Why me?

"Oh, Jim," Pike sighed. "That's a question for the ages. Why do bad things happen to good people? Humans have been asking that question since the beginning of time."

Kirk shook his head. "No," he murmured. "Why did I live. _Why me_?"

Pike grimaced. Survivor's guilt. It was so obvious. Jim had even mentioned it in that blasted interview. How is it that Pike never recognized it as being part of his protege's makeup?

"I don't know, but I am thankful for it," he confessed. "Where would we be if you hadn't survived?"

"Sir..."

Pike held up a forestalling hand. "No, Jim. It's true. If it wasn't for you, we would all be dead."

"Sir, no. I... It wasn't just me. If Uhura hadn't intercepted that message... if you hadn't bought us all time by turning yourself over to Nero. If - "

"If, if, if. None of it matters without you, son."

Kirk shook his head in instinctive denial.

"Yes," Pike insisted. "I would have taken the _Enterprise_ right into Vulcan airspace just like the commanders of the rest of the rescue fleet if you hadn't stopped me."

Kirk continued to shake his head back and forth.

"And Spock - he was determined to take the _Enterprise_ to the Laurentian system to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet as I ordered. The only reason he didn't was because of your tenacity and the stubborn belief that you were right when all the rest of us were wrong."

Pike leaned forward, urgency in his tone.

"And you _were_ right, Jim. We would all be dead if you hadn't done whatever it took to fight your way into that chair. Earth would be obliterated - just like Vulcan. And who knows how many other Federation planets would have met the same fate until someone finally figured out how to stop Nero."

Head down, Kirk stared at the floor between his feet, stubbornly unwilling to accept what the older man was saying.

"I think Arianna was right about one thing," Pike mused thoughtfully and Kirk's head snapped up in surprise.

"About what, Sir?" he rasped through a throat tight with unshed tears.

"That maybe you have been singled out. That maybe, just maybe, destiny or fate or some higher power has protected you time and time again because you had an important role to play in our history - and in our future."

Pike's chest swelled with pride and he stretched out one arm to lay his hand on the shoulder of the young man sitting by his side.

"Whatever it is in you that drove you to find a way to live through a mass genocide like Tarsus is the same part of you that saved us all in the end." His fingers tightened reassuringly over Kirk's shoulder. "The boy who found a way to survive, lives in you."

Pike's mouth curved into a fond smile.

"You don't have to hide that boy or be ashamed of him. Be proud of him and the man he became. God knows I am."

He squeezed his fingers again, waiting until Kirk raised his head, a dazed expression on his face and hope in shining in his eyes.

"You're gonna do great things, son, and thanks to you I'll be alive to see it."

End

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it. I hated having this unfinished work out there and am so glad to be able to call it complete now. To those of you who have been reading - and hopefully enjoying - thank you.


End file.
